End of Life Business

I watch as my dear father shuffles laboriously across the bumpy ice. I agitate with false starts towards him and then back away for I want to carry him to saftey but dare not touch him.

He winces with the pain of each step. I smile at him, relieved he has passed over the worst and has now reached the porch. I smile again to encourage him the rest of the way.

I know it must be bad. Dad lets me hold the door for him. Just a few short days ago, he proudly and stubornly held if for me, every degenerating muscle aching as he did so. It it's too much for him now.

His face is peaceful when he at last sits, fiddling with his strange new appendage. This cane, while allowing him the last vestiges of independance, is really just the instrument of the beginning of the end. Dad struggles silently, trying to put it to rest near the chair.

I watch as he closes his eyes for a moment, catching his breathing, bearing the temporarily receding but ever present pain. I wish him peace and relief with all my heart.

Soon, a very calm and empathetic looking woman smiles into the room. She takes my father's cold, bruised hand into her two warm ones, looks kindly at me, and welcomes us. I can't figure out which I want to do more: hide in the apparent safty of her arms or wrap mine tightly around my father's frail body and never let go.

I hold it together, smiling back at her, pushing away the nervous break-down that seems to linger at the corner of my eyes and the croak of my voice.